Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (42 page)

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Authors: Adam Lazarus

Tags: #Palmer; Arnold;, #Golfers, #Golf, #Golf - General, #Pennsylvania, #Sports & Recreation, #Sports, #United States, #Oakmont (Allegheny County), #Golf courses, #1929-, #History

BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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Unlike his playing partner, Palmer did not reach the fourth green in two shots on Sunday. He left his second shot just short of the green, splitting the bunkers that guard the green’s entry left and right. From there, he was in position to stroke a long but unencumbered chip to the flagstick from a perfect fairway lie. This strategy for playing the fourth hole worked brilliantly for Palmer, as he was the only leader to birdie the hole the first three rounds.
He made it four straight on Sunday by chipping five feet below the cup and converting the short putt. Now at four under par, he shared the lead with Jerry Heard. With shrill whistles and loud shouts of “Go!” the army’s noise momentarily halted all play in the area. And those Palmer faithful who stayed near the fourth green—and didn’t rudely hurry ahead, trying to follow the King to the next tee—were rewarded with the sight of Heard botching his long approach to the par-five.
Heard sliced his approach to the fourth green so badly that he was actually pleased with the outcome.
“Hit that right-hand bunker, baby; I’d rather be in the bunker if I’m not on the green.”
Heard’s wish was granted and the ball landed in a bunker twenty-five yards right of the green. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite execute the game plan of a simple up-and-down. His blast landed on the front edge of the green and rolled only a few feet. Missing that lengthy putt for birdie didn’t bother the confident Californian; his failure to save par on his next putt did, and he lost his share of the lead.
Now—for the first time since he had stood on the Olympic Club’s seventeenth green late Sunday afternoon in June 1966—Arnold Palmer held sole possession of the final-round U.S. Open lead. And for the fans gathered on this side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, nothing else taking place on the course really mattered.
Then it got messy.
 
ABC’S FINAL-ROUND BROADCAST OF THE seventy-third U.S. Open began Sunday afternoon at three thirty p.m. on the East Coast. With Palmer tied for the lead and Nicklaus, Trevino, Weiskopf, Boros, and 1972’s top young lion Jerry Heard in the hunt, network executives hoped viewership would equal the previous year’s dramatic final round at Pebble Beach, when Nicklaus outlasted the field in blustery Monterey weather.
With more color cameras in place to capture the action than ever before at a golf tournament, ABC’s producers were excited to use their state-of-the-art technology. And with eleven men separated by only three shots, the producers were forced to move rapidly from one image to another. This occasionally confused the announcers about which players and holes were on-screen.
Versatile baritone Chris Schenkel anchored the nine-announcer ABC crew. Best-known for broadcasting football, the Olympics, and bowling, the forty-nine-year-old offered viewers a reasonably solid knowledge of golf. But to provide expert commentary, the legendary Byron Nelson sat beside Schenkel, microphone in hand. The sixty-one-year-old, five-time major champion remained one of the most respected names in golf, even though he had retired from tournament competition nearly three decades earlier. His slow Southern twang and relaxed style were the perfect antidotes to the natural chaos of a live golf tournament broadcast.
Former PGA champion Dave Marr and distinguished British columnist (and former German Amateur champion) Henry Longhurst provided supplemental expertise as roving commentators, while the lively Jim McKay, Bill Fleming, and Keith Jackson brought their customary enthusiasm to the broadcast.
ABC also utilized the first woman announcer at a men’s golfing event, the recently retired LPGA star Marilynn Smith. Along with the suave, former New York Giants halfback Frank Gifford, Smith covered holes eight and thirteen, but was admittedly nervous in her new role. Schenkel’s labored chivalry probably did little to help.
“Yes, and we even have a woman, a lady in the group,” Schenkel told viewers, “and we welcome Marilynn Smith and we hope she doesn’t feel too uncomfortable. The ratio for her is very good, Byron.”
Quintessentially the Southern gentleman, Byron Nelson knew that Smith—a feisty, two-time major champion and brave cofounder of the LPGA—was not to be messed with.
“She can take care of herself, on or off the golf course,” Nelson responded.
Out on the golf course, birdies were, not surprisingly, scarce for the leaders. Even after Friday’s sprinkler malfunction on the greens, followed by Saturday’s hard rains, the field was shooting no lower scores than it had on Thursday, when the course played traditionally brutally. So far, no one had matched Gary Player’s score of five under that he posted at the end of round two. Oakmont had bent, but not broken.
ABC’s telecast began on the downhill, 195-yard, par-three sixth hole, which Schenkel accurately deemed “one of the [most] sensational par-three holes that we’ve ever seen.” While the tee shot required only a mid-iron, bunkers encircled a green that tilted sharply from right to left. Several moguls and countless subtle undulations made for many three putts, even from short distances. And even though the green was relatively soft, stopping the ball on the putting surface was still impossible from the deep right-side bunker. An off-line tee shot to the right could easily lead to a double bogey.
With Sunday’s flagstick placed on the center right of the green, landing the ball close required a high fade. But that was a daring shot, because it brought the right-hand bunker into play. Most men felt more comfortable hitting to the left of the flagstick to set up a manageable two putt for par.
Naturally, ABC hoped to open its broadcast with a heroic portrait of Palmer standing beneath the copious trees that shaded the sixth tee. Unfortunately, the Palmer-Schlee twosome had fallen a bit behind schedule. Instead, Tom Weiskopf and Bob Charles were the first golfers to come into view on the sixth, where both men had missed the green to the left. Buried in a nasty, fried-egg lie, Charles could move the ball only a few feet and barely carried it into the green-side rough. From there, the great short-game artist chipped close enough for a bogey.
Weiskopf faced an equally difficult recovery shot, as his ball rested on a downhill slope in thick grass behind a pot bunker. He gently pitched onto the green and—benefiting from the soft conditions—the ball stopped six feet past the hole. He sank the putt to save par.
Within a few minutes, Palmer, still in sole possession of the lead, reached the sixth tee.
“The pin cut where it is today is not an easy shot for Arnie,” Nelson informed the TV audience, “because he doesn’t fade the ball very well.”
As the wind began to pick up, Palmer fretted over what kind of shot to play. Just as he prepared to hit, he paused, stepped back, and asked his young caddie, Tom Tihey, to bring the bag so he could change clubs. He then opened his stance, having made the decision to attack the flag with a fade, and aggressively swiped at the ball.
Long before the ball reached its apex, both the gallery around the tee and the TV audience at home knew that Palmer didn’t like the stroke. Immediately, he yelled out, “Oh, no,” indicating that he’d double-crossed the shot: aiming left of the flagstick to produce a fade, but accidentally hooking the ball farther left instead. The shot crashed near the end wall of a bunker, accessible but buried near the lip. Palmer would have to stand above and outside the bunker just to reach the ball.
Once the groans of the gallery died down, John Schlee set up on the far right side of the tee box. Noticeably calmer and in much better balance than on his opening tee shot, Schlee arched his ball gracefully from left to right, and it stopped only ten feet from the cup.
Palmer played his difficult bunker shot well, softly exploding the ball to a hair outside of Schlee’s. He left his par-saving putt short and settled for bogey. Within seconds, Schlee’s left-to-right breaker curled into the cup’s left edge, moving him into a five-way tie for the lead at three under with Palmer, Schlee, Weiskopf, Boros, and Heard.
“We may be here for a week,” joked Nelson.
 
SUNDAY’S LEADERS CONTINUED TO JOCKEY for position on the remaining holes of the front nine, with little change. Though Trevino caught up with everyone at three under par, Oakmont’s greens continued to perplex him, and his anger burned through the TV cameras. Americans had never seen the “Merry Mex” so glum. On both the fairways and the greens, he constantly fiddled with his putting grip and stroke, hoping to coax his fingers into striking each putt the proper distance. The brilliance of his play from tee to green could not outweigh his irritation at seeing so many putts die just short of the cup.
Nicklaus’s difficulties on the front nine were entirely different, as he struggled to drive the ball in the fairway. His neck may have been pain-free, but he couldn’t climb the leaderboard after his early birdie on number two. He bogeyed the par-three eighth hole after a poor tee shot, and when his makeable eagle putt at the ninth failed to drop, he remained at even par, several strokes behind.
John Schlee seemed the least likely of the contenders to remain atop the leaderboard. His topsy-turvy start—double bogey, par, par, eagle, bogey, birdie—continued throughout the rest of the front nine. After a conventional par on number seven, he sliced his three-wood weakly into the right bunker on the par-three eighth, over thirty yards from the flagstick. From there he made bogey, which dropped him a stroke behind Palmer and two behind the front-runner, Julius Boros.
Schlee and Palmer then moved on to the ninth, where both men paired long drives with solid approach shots to reach the par-five in two.
In the shadow of the clubhouse, the ninth green is multitiered and, at twenty-two thousand square feet, is one of the largest putting surfaces in American golf (the ninth green and the practice green are actually connected, divided only by a dotted chalk line). The ninth had historically been a source of great angst for Arnold Palmer.
During the fourth round of the 1962 U.S. Open, Palmer stood at three under for the championship, nursing a two-stroke lead over Nicklaus, who was playing one hole ahead. Thinking that a birdie might seal the championship, Palmer brandished his customary boldness.
“I don’t suppose it surprised anyone that I went for the green, pounding a three-wood right on the screws,” he recalled years later. “The ball drifted a little too much, though, and settled in the heavy rough just off the green, about pin high.”
Birdie was still a definite possibility, especially for the man who specialized in the unconventionally extraordinary.
“I was used to playing out of the longer grass, where careful players seldom ventured,” he said. “I took my stance and aimed at the pin and drew back my wedge. The unimaginable happened. I stubbed the shot. The ball popped up and settled in the rough mere inches from where it had been. The gallery around the green groaned and then grew so eerily quiet I swear you could hear the blood pumping angrily through my veins. I glared at the ball and tried again, producing another poor effort that left the ball eight feet from the cup. Instead of an excellent shot at birdie I now had to scramble like crazy for par. I missed the putt, grazing the right edge of the hole. I’d turned a surefire birdie into a bogey, which under the circumstances felt like a double bogey. Even worse, it gave Nicklaus just the opening he needed.”
Eleven years later, Palmer could now regain a measure of revenge, if not against Nicklaus, at least on Oakmont’s ninth. Sinking the forty-foot eagle putt would leapfrog Palmer from one behind the leaders to one ahead.
Sweat soaked through Palmer’s shirt as he looked over the putt; the midday sun had peaked, firming up the greens. Throughout the championship, no putting surface was faster than the ninth. Palmer sent the severely right-to-left putt downhill across the green before it descended one terrace, climbed another, and finally slid speedily toward the hole. The crowd held its breath in anticipation as the ball neared the cup, curving ever more sharply as it slowed. Gasps turned to
aws
as it died two feet from what would have been a deafening eagle three.
To their dismay, the Palmer faithful had to wait a few minutes to see their general hole out for a share of the lead; Palmer was not playing alone, and John Schlee’s turn to putt was next. After Schlee holed out for a birdie, Palmer hitched his pants, replaced his ball, and delicately tapped it into the hole. The five-deep crowd surrounding the green and those watching from the bleachers exploded.
“The hills are rocking!” Schenkel declared. “Now at eighteen it goes up on the scoreboard. Listen to ’em! Well, in the past week Secretariat and Arnold Palmer have received the most applause I’ve ever heard.”
Unlike eleven years earlier, the 1973 U.S. Open was no head-to-head showdown, pitting golf’s iconic star against his younger, ascending equal. Instead, Oakmont’s fifth Open still remained a mad scramble among nearly a dozen contestants.
Palmer’s birdie on number nine returned him to the top of the mountain, and from his perspective, only wily Julius Boros—who twice in the previous decade had stolen major championships from Palmer—posed a serious threat to his victory. And having shot a sparkling 33 on the back nine the day before, Palmer strode to the tenth tee confident that by Sunday evening, when he and “Deke” Palmer hopped into his Cadillac to make the long drive back to Latrobe, the U.S. Open trophy would be sitting between them.
 
JERRY HEARD’S SUNDAY WAS A struggle all afternoon. From tee to green, he had been brilliant in the third round, but he was far less predictable in round four. Only a good dose of luck and youthful exuberance kept him in contention.

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